Changing Perspectives within a Network of Young Migration Professionals

The fundamental idea of the Young Policy Network on Migration project was to create a framework for mutual learning among young professionals working on migration issues and also to walk the line between research, praxis and policy making. The network embraces fellows from different countries and various professional backgrounds. A retrospective of the first two years of this social experiment and a look into the future.

The Young Policy Network on Migration (YPNM) project started in 2017 with the recruitment of 26 young professionals all working in the field of migration – but from different institutional and geographical perspectives. The 26 fellows were selected through a nomination procedure. The young professionals who where chosen work and live in Germany, Switzerland, Belgium (Brussels), the United States, Canada and, at least time-wise, in other parts of the world. They work in national administrations, European Union institutions, international organizations, non-governmental organizations (NGO), universities, research institutes, media services and political committees or decision-making bodies.

The YPNM has been collaboratively implemented during the last two years by the Swiss Forum for Migration and Population Studies (SFM) of the University of Neuchâtel and the German Marshall Fund of the United States (GMF) based in Berlin. The generous grants from the nccr – on the move and Mercator Switzerland enabled the project team to set up this network. The YPNM fellows met two times, in January 2018 and February 2019, for a week of discussions and exchange. The aim of the meetings was to confront different (institutional) perspectives on migration issues and to walk the line between two groups of professionals one could schematically describe as «practitioners» and «researchers».

More Than 700 Years of Life Experience

«There are more than 700 years of life experience in this room» was the introductory comment of Yaari Pannwitz, who works at the ‘Regionale Arbeitsstellen für Bildung, Integration und Demokratie’ (RAA) in Berlin. He facilitated a two days Opens Space session carried out during the recent YPNM meeting in the historical castle of Liebenberg near Berlin. Open Space is an innovative method that basically allows to put the knowledge and experience of the participating fellows in a box shaped by a motto. Shaking this box allows to restructure the outputs in an innovative way. The outcome was an interesting series of very concrete actions and projects, in which the fellows manifest their will and commitment to carry on the YPNM beyond the first funded project phase ending in February 2019. The common ground for this networking project thus seems to be the bare fact that fellows consider the interaction with each other as beneficial – not only for their own professional development, but maybe also regarding their striving for their respective intimate visions of a «better world». The dedication to the YPNM project shown by the fellows resonates with the fundamental rule by which Yaari Pannwitz framed the Open Space session: «If I can contribute or learn something here, I shall stay. If I can neither learn nor contribute anything, I shall leave.»

The idea underlying the selection of the 26 YPNM fellows was to represent the diversity of professions and institutions that are nowadays dealing with migration issues. In this regard, diversity has clearly been achieved: to give some examples, the YPNM includes a city council member, a psychotherapist, a Frontex officer, a mayor, a journalist, a legal counselor, a curator, policy advisors and project managers of international organizations and NGOs, a philosopher and several social and political scientists. A further dimension of diversity is to be considered: even though these people are themselves quite mobile, often changing workplaces, some of them staying at least temporally in countries of the global south, they are predominantly white and born in the global north. Women clearly outnumber men. The sample is thus quite representative of the typical profile of persons working in the field of migration. The sparse presence of persons from (marginalized) migrant minorities or persons from the global south – in other words, those people migration researchers and practitioners often speak about and work on – is a fact that is regularly noted and sometimes deplored in the professional milieu.

Pros and Cons Open Borders

During the recent YPNM meeting a third dimension of diversity within the group was questioned by the fellows: The moral and political attitudes and beliefs YPNM fellows cherish with regard to the topic of migration. In order to verify the strong assumption that a vast majority of the fellows are fundamentally in favor of open and inclusive migration policies, an ad hoc survey was set up during the Open Space session. Besides a short online survey including seven questions on attitudes towards migration, fellows were also asked to situate themselves on a graph crossing leftist or rightist positions with regard to the economy (x-axis) and migration (y-axis). Drawn on a flip chart, the graph was hung out in a historical room of the castle that had been – in chronological order – a chapel, a meeting room of a resistance group during Nazi Germany, a computer room during the German Democratic Republic period, a museum, and that thus became a kind of polling booth. The results of both ad hoc surveys confirmed the assumption: a vast majority of the YPNM fellows favor open and inclusive migration policies, appreciate diverse societies and feel great unease face to right-wing populist movements. As shown by the results of the graph experiment, this view is nearly always combined with a preference for redistributive (socialist) economic policies. In conclusion, the survey revealed a rather small variance of opinions represented within the YPNM fellows, and thus an ideological homogeneity of the group.

Does this mean that this group of persons is thinking and exchanging inside a bubble? Thus unable to think out of the box? The first two meetings showed that a basic consensus on the topic of migration and a shared view on the world’s situation does not necessarily prevent controversial debates within the group. Evidence for this brought a fierce pros and cons discussion on open borders. In this debate surfaced different views on the compatibility of redistributive social systems with a fully liberalized migration policy, as well as moral dilemmas deriving from the fatality birth. Even though controversial debate actually took place, it is likely that the shared baseline in terms of political convictions and values favors the group’s cohesion and enhances the will to collective action. This question indeed underlies contemporary debates about integration and inclusion and will probably keep young migration professionals busy in the coming decades.